Constraining CO<sub>2</sub> emissions from open biomass burning  by satellite observations of co-emitted species: a method and  its application to wildfires in Siberia

Konovalov, I. B.; Berezin, E. V.; Ciais, P.; Broquet, G.; Beekmann, M.; Hadji-Lazaro, J.; Clerbaux, C.; Andreae, M. O.; Kaiser, J. W.; Schulze, E.-D.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-10383-2014

Articles | Volume 14, issue 19

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-10383-2014

© Author(s) 2014. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-10383-2014

© Author(s) 2014. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 19

Research article

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01 Oct 2014

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 01 Oct 2014

Constraining CO₂ emissions from open biomass burning by satellite observations of co-emitted species: a method and its application to wildfires in Siberia

I. B. Konovalov, E. V. Berezin, P. Ciais, G. Broquet, M. Beekmann, J. Hadji-Lazaro, C. Clerbaux, M. O. Andreae, J. W. Kaiser, and E.-D. Schulze

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Preprint (discussion started on 29 Jan 2014)

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Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC C672: 'Referee report', Anonymous Referee #1, 24 Mar 2014
- SC C709: 'Author comment', Igor Konovalov, 25 Mar 2014
- AC C3719: 'Response to the comments of the anonymous referee # 1', Igor Konovalov, 17 Jun 2014
RC C2126: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 06 May 2014
- AC C3731: 'Response to the comments of the anonymous referee # 2', Igor Konovalov, 17 Jun 2014

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Igor Konovalov on behalf of the Authors (30 Jun 2014) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (08 Jul 2014) by Monika Kopacz

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (25 Aug 2014)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The paper addresses the interesting problem of estimating the CO2 emissions from forest and grass fires in Siberia. I see the manuscript for the second time and noted its substantial improvement since the first version, which I have criticized for several methodological flaws.

The authors responded to the main criticism – lack of independent evaluation – by withholding the every third day from the optimization procedure and using them for the evaluation. The comparison showed quite reasonable stability of the scores. I noticed some 15% rise of the total estimates compare to the previous paper version, which probably originated from changing the procedure and optimization dataset. This is acceptable for the problem with so large uncertainties. I also appreciate large amount of work behind this correction.

The problem of CO- vs AOD- based CO2 emission was more difficult to answer because the modified procedure still ended up with 2.2-2.8 times more CO2 from AOD-based estimates than from CO-based ones. However, the authors brought the problem upfront, provided both estimates, discussed the uncertainties and left the decision for the reader. This is probably the best option available today.

The independence of CO and PM emission factors proved to be the most difficult. I am not convinced by the supplementary study, which, albeit interesting, just showed a large spread between different studies made in different years, regions, by different teams, etc. This does not prove the independence of the errors in the Siberian case of the specific year as assumed by the authors. However, as mentioned above, the authors provided separate AOD- and CO- based estimates and discussed their interrelations. In particular, the authors pointed out that AOD-based estimates formed a comparatively small correction to the CO-based values. A critical reader can therefore use either of these or combine them by own way: the outcome will most-probably be inside the uncertainty range suggested by the authors. I think this is sufficient.

From technical side, I spotted a few misprints, which should be cleaned during the proof-reading. Also, figures are very small and in some cases barely readable even with large magnification. Presumably, this will be corrected in the final publication.

Summarizing, I think that the new version of the paper is much better than the initial submission and the main flaws in the methodology are adequately addressed. In its present form, the paper is a comprehensive piece of work that brings substantial new information and also puts up old and new questions to be answered in the future.

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ED: Publish as is (26 Aug 2014) by Monika Kopacz

AR by Igor Konovalov on behalf of the Authors (27 Aug 2014)

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Constraining CO2 emissions from open biomass burning by satellite observations of co-emitted species: a method and its application to wildfires in Siberia

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Constraining CO₂ emissions from open biomass burning by satellite observations of co-emitted species: a method and its application to wildfires in Siberia